Towner County Living Center

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. The nursing rating features a host of datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its top-shelf profile, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in the category. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished assessing the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also want to note the fact that this nursing home was given a superb score of A in our short-term care area. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is frequently a meaningful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Finally, this nursing home also earned excellent inspection reports in recent years. We gave it one of our best grades in the area of inspections, with an A. Few facilities earned an A- or better in every single category. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.